What is Bolnagri?
The Bolnagri keyboard layout is a layout the takes advantage of the QWERTY keyboard layout to enable the person to type in Hindi. Or, more specifically, it lets you type in devanagari script, which makes up the Hindi Language.
The layout of the keyboard looks like this:
This is great for those who have a QWERTY keyboard but also want to type in Hindi. The “official” keyboard for Hindi is INSCRIPT which is completely unrelated to the characters in english. Here some example of the Bolnagri keyboards layout
| Sound | QWERTY Key | Hindi Letter |
|---|---|---|
| a | ALTGR+a | अ |
| aa | A | आ |
| k | kx | क् |
| ka | k | क |
| ja | j | ज |
| jha | J | झ |
If you know English and a bit of Hindi (or the other way around) the above should make a bit of sense.
The “a” sound is typed in by entering ALTGR + a
The “aa” sound is typed in by entering A
The “ja” sound is typed in by entering j
The “jha” sound is typed in by entering J
This all works because Hindi does not use capital letters, so those are reused for alternative forms of a similar sounding letter.
ALTGR
One other oddity (compared to English QWERTY) is the ALTGR key. On my keyboard, that is the right alt key, but that can also bound to SHIFT+ALT or it could be it’s own key.
It’s an older term that means “alternate graphic” but now is just another modify for characters input (much like the “shift” key modifies the input)
Example: All the ways you could ever want to use the “o” sound:
| Sound | key input | Hindi character |
|---|---|---|
| VOWEL+o | o | ो |
| VOWEL+au | O | ौ |
| o | ALTGR+o | ओ |
| au | ALTGR+au | औ |